Revelers prepare for the new year

Posted: Friday, January 01, 1999

By Christopher ChesterAssociated Press

NEW YORK -- Hundreds of thousands of revelers were converging on Times Square on New Year's Eve to party like it's 1999.

After a particularly bountiful year for New York City and its financial markets, irrational exuberance was mounting as workers put the finishing touches on a 16-foot Father Time puppet, a 15,000-balloon release, a spotlight said to be visible from Mars, and the final drop of a 500-pound aluminum ball that has ushered in every New Year since the 1960s.

The ball will be replaced by a Waterford Crystal-made successor next December.

''You will not be hearing 'Auld Lang Syne' at my party,'' promised Casper Wallace, a 28-year-old Brooklyn man who was buying rum, gin and champagne at a liquor store Wednesday. ''It will be strictly '1999,''' he said referring to the early-1980s song by Prince, when he was still known as Prince. ''I've been waiting to play that song, at that moment, for a long time.''

In Times Square, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Chinese gymnast Sang Lan, who was paralyzed in a fall at the Goodwill Games, were charged with pressing the button that starts the ball's drop.

Despite temperatures in the low- to mid-20s, the party was expected to draw 500,000 revelers and a record numbers of TV viewers this year, partly because of Chinese interest in Lan's participation.

Meanwhile, the folks in Lebanon, Pa., were planning the Second Annual New Year's Eve Bologna Drop.

The Lebanon Valley Sertoma Club was to lower a 100-pound, 7-foot cylinder of smoked bologna from the roof of the Lebanon Unfinished Furniture building. Last year, about 1,200 people turned out for the ceremony.

In Fayetteville, Ark., the city was having its first family-oriented First Night celebration, an outdoor festival that includes artisans, musicians, food, jugglers and midnight fireworks.

''We're going to party like it's 1999,'' said Nancy Hendricks, assistant to the mayor. ''This is a way for young people to spend New Year's Eve with their families and also a way for people to see you can have a wonderfully good time without getting wasted.''

In Boston, Anheuser-Busch was handing out $10 taxi vouchers for patrons who got too drunk to drive home. The freebie was being made available to nine bars and restaurants.

In Worcester, Mass., this year's party was to have a medieval theme, hence a change in name to First Knight. Organizers hoped City Hall would feel like a medieval castle, with lords and ladies, jesters and dragons.

New Year's Eve was perhaps not so festive for the roughly 10,000 customers still without power in Virginia since an ice storm on Christmas Eve.

But in Branson, Mo., the folks at the Chateau on the Lake were promising New Year's Eve would be a night to remember.

The hotel constructed a replica of the bow of the Titanic and placed it in its 32,000-square-foot Great Hall. There, 500 party guests were to dine on the same seven-course meal the Titanic passengers ate just before the ship struck an iceberg and went down in 1912.

In New York, a few hardy people took off most of their clothes for a swim in the Hudson River, which at about 40 degrees wasn't much warmer than an iceberg. Four members of the Coney Island Arctic Ice Bears completed the 200-yard swim.

But Ken Jones, a 37-year-old former Mr. America and president of the Arctic Ice Bears, had to be rescued by a police scuba unit after suffering cramps near the halfway point in the swim.

''When you're only 4 percent body fat, sometimes it's tough,'' he said after the rescue. ''It's still the greatest feeling in the world though.''